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China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
81–90 of 111 posts
Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
#82I work in Chinese publishing, and the same thing is absolutely happening there. Books are being pulled off the shelves, publishers are being warned away from anything potentially controversial. The basic attitude is, "Don't risk it", and it's absolutely deadly to creativity and culture. On the one hand, the central government is trying to encourage Chinese culture to "Go Out" and wow the world. On the other, it is ab…
This is very concerning. I'm curious how all this is delivered as far as the actions of officials to enact this behavior in general populace. How exactly do they pull it off? Are there new strategies employed or do they leverage years of chilling requests and punishments for people to generally know better not to cross the government? Do people personally know political prisoners and what not or see punished individu…
The framework of control has been in place for a long time, it's just that they've been tightening down the (already-in-place) screws over the past couple of years.
The basic mechanism is control of ISBNs: the supply of these numbers is tightly restricted, and a book cannot be published without them. A fixed number of state-owned publishers is able to issue ISBNs, though privately-owned publishing companies can buy the numbers or work with a state-owned house to publish their books.
An ISBN acts as a chain-of-custody token for the publication of books. While some books are subject to approval before publication, the vast majority are not, and publication is done at the publisher's discretion. Should a book cause problems after publication, however, the consequences are catastrophic. The ISBN (and a "responsible editor" whose name appears on the copyright page of the book) allows the government to track down everyone who was involved in the production of the book, and squash them. People lose their jobs, in some cases publishing companies are suspended or dissolved outright.
It's a system carefully designed to make writers and publishers more cautious than they would actually need to be.
Publishing, while highly controlled by the government, isn't really an area where people end up in prison, or you see televised trials. The worst that usually happens is the ruining of a career, or in extreme cases the dissolution of a company (in journalism, by contrast, people get put in jail, or disappear). I've written about this distinction before[1], which I think is lost on most international observers.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/opinion/the-real-censors-...
Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mostly based on a 2015 Slate article which might not be accurate (in terms of proven cases, as opposed to people's familiarity with the concept). http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2... http://www.snopes.com/chinese-drivers-kill-pedestrians/
I don't know if that's true or not, but if the penalties described in that article are accurate, I'd say the penalties for killing someone with a vehicle, either from recklessness or malice, are shockingly lenient.
Yeah. My impression is that Chinese penalites for many crimes are out of whack and need to be tuned better so the punishment fits the crime. (Not saying that The West is perfect, but as I said above, I don't think China's legal system is quite as well-refined.)
There was actually quite a lot of discussion on HN on the slate article, with many people who live(d) in China attesting to the truth of the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173395
Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rich poor divide. Transportation. Pollution. Environment. Ethnic separatism/unrest. Energy. Public Health. Rights of criminally accused. And a not quite as well refined legal system...for instance I was reading about how drivers who accidentally hit a pedestrian are actually incentivise to backup to make sure to kill the pedestrians. And the social acceptance and ability to talk freely about social issues in public f…
Maybe it's just a difference in perspective, but I see all these problems and I think, wow, China has come so far DESPITE all these issues, yet there is so much more low hanging fruit to be picked and so much more potential to be obtained. All these problems seem incredibly manageable, and many are being fixed rapidly, and with their resolution growth will speed up even faster.
I don't disagree with that. But I do think the lack of free speech/press/elections is a basic foundational problem which will hamper progress on the rest of these problems.
Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
#85Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rich poor divide. Transportation. Pollution. Environment. Ethnic separatism/unrest. Energy. Public Health. Rights of criminally accused. And a not quite as well refined legal system...for instance I was reading about how drivers who accidentally hit a pedestrian are actually incentivise to backup to make sure to kill the pedestrians. And the social acceptance and ability to talk freely about social issues in public f…
Maybe it's just a difference in perspective, but I see all these problems and I think, wow, China has come so far DESPITE all these issues, yet there is so much more low hanging fruit to be picked and so much more potential to be obtained. All these problems seem incredibly manageable, and many are being fixed rapidly, and with their resolution growth will speed up even faster.
The question is not how far China has come in recent decades, it is what is going to happen in the future. You seem to be taking the position that it is absolutely impossible that China will get in serious trouble and wind up going backwards.
Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe it's just a difference in perspective, but I see all these problems and I think, wow, China has come so far DESPITE all these issues, yet there is so much more low hanging fruit to be picked and so much more potential to be obtained. All these problems seem incredibly manageable, and many are being fixed rapidly, and with their resolution growth will speed up even faster.
I don't disagree with that. But I do think the lack of free speech/press/elections is a basic foundational problem which will hamper progress on the rest of these problems.
Lack of free speech brings certain risks, but I don't see any reason that it must necessarily hamper progress. In fact, by simple observation of earth for the last 30 years one could easily come to the opposite conclusion.
Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe it's just a difference in perspective, but I see all these problems and I think, wow, China has come so far DESPITE all these issues, yet there is so much more low hanging fruit to be picked and so much more potential to be obtained. All these problems seem incredibly manageable, and many are being fixed rapidly, and with their resolution growth will speed up even faster.
The question is not how far China has come in recent decades, it is what is going to happen in the future. You seem to be taking the position that it is absolutely impossible that China will get in serious trouble and wind up going backwards.
More like it seems relatively (compared to other countries) unlikely.
Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
#89Xi Jinping is pushing massive censorship because he thinks it is good for China, but I think that is a big mistake. History has shown that when you don't have open, public debate on important issues, the government becomes close-minded and makes poor decisions. Yes, democracy is messy, but the alternatives are worse.
Part of the problem here is that China is still running according to Confucianism, which was a wonderfully effective political philosophy for a largely agrarian society, but is quite ill-suited for the modern world. The Chinese need to think out what is the right form of government for the modern industrial world, but to do that they need free discussion, which is just what Xi is making impossible.
Re: China's bloggers, filmmakers feel chill of internet crackdown
#90I feel stringent censorship is among the most unbearable things.
If we look at the censorship history in different countries over the world, such as France (before the 20th century) and USSR, the only way to end a very stringent censorship in a society is by ending the ruling government itself, which is usually an autocracy, or an oligarchy at best. But that could mean a period of turmoil that would destroy many people's lives across the entire country. It seems one way to avoid this great destruction is for most of the population in the country to rise up in synchrony and simultaneously topple down the government together -- but this concurrency at a society level is one of the major targets that the current censorship implemented in China aims at.
Sigh...It just seems impossible to have hack out a consensus in a distributed system when the powerful system admin with his privileges at the root level constantly interferes...